Is the Great Mirror Stagnation over?

“There hasn’t been much innovation with the mirror,” said Ming-Zher Poh, who, as a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, developed a bio-sensing system called the Medical Mirror.

Introduced in 2010, the Medical Mirror uses a camera to measure a person’s pulse rate based on slight variations in the brightness of the face as blood flows each time the heart pumps. A two-way mirror creates a reflection while keeping visible the pulse reading on a computer monitor behind the mirror’s surface.

And this:

Japanese electronics conglomerate Panasonic Corp. initially considered targeting household consumers with its digital mirror—a flat-screen display powered by a computer behind a two-way mirror—but the company decided to target business customers instead because of the price.

In July, Panasonic started accepting orders for its mirror—priced at nearly Y3 million ($38,000)—targeting physical rehabilitation centers.

At the Yokohama Rehabilitation Center in Japan, a test site for the device, 77-year-old Takao Yamamura uses the digital mirror to rehabilitate after suffering extensive nerve damage following a spinal cord infarction.

The full article is here. One problem is that consumers do not buy new mirrors very often, plus they are used to prices below $38k.

Mirror evolving a *lot* at the high end, where there is an actual need:

* Thin-film dielectric mirrors can have absurdly high reflectivities and can have precisely engineered spectral properties.
* Ever better tricks for making smoother surfaces are being used, and are needed to make use of high reflectivities.
* We are making adaptive mirrors which can compensate for refraction in the atmosphere.
* We are making bigger mirrors than before (for telescopes)
* We are inventing clever ways to make tiny mirrors (e.g. sticking dielectric films at the ends of optical fibres)